Challenges (Frank Kurns Stories of the UnknownWorld Book 4)

by Natalie Grey

  “Or you,” Alexi said with a chuckle. “You may not always have been able to shift, but even I didn’t want to get on your bad side when you were a child.”

  Ecaterina muttered, “So that’s where Christina got it.” She raised her voice. “Andrei. Good day to you.”

  “What are you doing with these traps?” Andrei demanded.

  Ecaterina and Alexi exchanged a look. Perhaps Andrei wasn’t behind this at all. Perhaps he was just as offended as they were by the presence of the traps there.

  “We’re disabling them,” Ecaterina said. Even if Andrei was behind all this, she wasn’t particularly worried. People in this town could be easily kept in line by the reminder that the whole town would shame them for bad behavior. “Do you know who set them up?”

  “Yeah,” Andrei said combatively. “I did.”

  So much for hoping. Alexi shook his head wearily.

  “Child, do you have any idea what you are playing with?”

  To his surprise, a gun appeared in Andrei’s hand. “Do you?” Andrei demanded.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ecaterina felt a sudden surge of anger and tried to keep her emotions in check. The last thing she needed was to shift forms without warning. For one thing, the existence of Wechselbalg wasn’t something that should be widely known yet.

  For another, she really liked these jeans.

  Plus, Alexi had always solved these things with talk before.

  “Andrei.” She tried to keep her tone soothing. “Why are you pointing a gun at us?”

  Andrei blinked. Clearly he had not anticipated this particular question.

  His face hardened again a moment later. “Shut up.”

  She could practically smell the fear rolling off him.

  Alexi could smell it too, and he was intrigued. In his confrontations with trappers he had seen greed, laziness, and yes, sometimes anger. In his experience, when people did something they knew was wrong, they only got angrier when someone called them on it. Once or twice he’d seen exhaustion and hunger, and he’d made sure that those families got what they needed.

  This was different. Andrei’s fear was part desperation, part panic, and the nice clothes and shiny gun, as well as the very well-made traps, showed that money wasn’t the issue.

  Or was it?

  “Andrei, do you know who I am?”

  “You’re old man Alexi.” Andrei had the sense not to be outright rude, but he clearly wasn’t happy with this conversation. “But it doesn’t matter who you are, you can’t just interfere with this.”

  Alexi was determined to deescalate this.

  “How is Mihai?” he asked the boy.

  “Fine,” Andrei said sullenly. He shrugged.

  For any other boy, Alexi would have had a stern reminder about manners. Most boys, though, didn’t point guns at him and his niece in the forest.

  He wondered if it might not still be advisable.

  “Why are you setting traps out?” he asked.

  “For—” Andrei bit his words off and looked between them warily. “It’s none of your business.”

  “These are our forests,” Ecaterina pointed out. Her voice was soft and kind. “Children play here, Andrei.”

  Andrei looked uncertain. “Well, they shouldn’t be out alone.”

  “And the balance of the forests—”

  “Oh, please.” Andrei rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that ‘living forest’ crap. If we went back to the old ways we’d all be living in caves. We wouldn’t have doctors. Or toilets. Is that really what you want?”

  Ecaterina’s eyes narrowed.

  Even she, with her almost constant escapes into the wilderness, had not truly understood the force and necessity of nature until she had largely given it up. The Meredith Reynolds was a true technological marvel, and Bethany Anne’s dedication to making it self-sufficient and pleasant was impressive.

  But building the seed vault only drove home the truly staggering complexity of ecosystems. It was almost incomprehensible to the human mind, the sheer number of plants and animals that interacted to create these forests.

  And she refused to believe that Andrei had no concept of this.

  She told him, “There is a difference between understanding the forest and wanting to live in caves.”

  “Sure.” He sneered at her and jabbed the gun. “You think animals are more important than humans.”

  “Not more important—”

  “People need to live and eat, you know!” He waved the gun.

  Alexi’s eyes widened. Never had he seen someone be so careless, and he was worrying that this situation would escalate too quickly to control.

  Whatever happened, he would not allow Ecaterina to be hurt.

  Andrei continued, “When people need to make a living, it’s not fair to expect them to preserve some pristine forest just so other people can tramp through it.”

  Ecaterina tilted her head. It was just an inkling, but she was pretty sure that these weren’t really Andrei’s words. It sounded like he was repeating a justification someone else had told him.

  “Who said that to you?” she asked curiously.

  It was both the right and the wrong question to ask. Andrei’s face got white and scared, and he pointed the gun with sudden determination.

  “You do not know who you’re playing with.” He spoke the words carefully, very slowly, as if he wanted to impress upon them the importance of what he was saying.

  “The person who hired you,” Ecaterina pressed.

  “Ecaterina…” Alexi began.

  “He’s not playing around,” Andrei said quietly. He looked truly afraid. “And he’s not going to tolerate you messing up his plans. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll back off. I could…” He looked around suddenly, as if terrified that someone might be listening in. “No, best you just go and hope he never finds you.”

  “Tell us who he is,” Ecaterina pleaded. “We can help you.”

  Alexi bit his lip rather than interfere. Saying anything might break the spell Ecaterina was weaving, and he could sense that Andrei was wavering. The man knew that what he was doing was wrong, and he wanted to believe he could get out of this mess.

  Then the fear came crashing back, followed by terrible resolve. It was an expression Alexi had seen only a handful of times, and he hated it. It said, “I have to save myself first.”

  And his finger tightened around the trigger.

  Ecaterina might have been trying to resolve this matter peacefully, but she was ready for it to turn violent. With the reflexes bestowed by both her recent changes and her inborn instincts, she was already diving out of the way as Andrei fired.

  By the time she rolled and stood up, she was in Pricolici form.

  Andrei fired again. Once he had started shooting, in his panic he just kept doing so. But the wolf was far faster than he was. It evaded each shot, slinking and weaving until his clip was out, and then it leapt straight for him.

  Bowled over onto his back on the forest floor, looking up into the face of the massive wolf, Andrei gave a low moan of fear.

  The wolf dipped its snout close to Andrei’s face. “Youuuuu willllll tellll meeee evvvverythiiiiing nowwwww…”

  There was a long pause, and then the wolf nudged Andrei’s limp form. The man had passed out in terror.

  “Orrrrrr innnn a minuuuuute…” the wolf muttered.

  Alexi laughed until he was doubled over, hand over his belly. Then he settled down with his back against a tree to wait.

  ***

  “It isn’t that simple,” Ecaterina said later. She was pacing back and forth in the small kitchen waving her arms.

  “How is it not that simple?” Bethany Anne’s voice filtered out of the speaker. “He’s doing all of this—he admitted it. He knows it’s wrong.”

  “People mess up,” Nathan pointed out.

  “Not checking the takeout order before you leave is messing up,” Bethany Anne said, annoyed. “Listening to someone who sw
eet talks you into killing innocent animals is on a totally different level.”

  Ecaterina wavered. Her shoulders were hunched as she leaned against the wall.

  “I just don’t think he really wants to do it,” she said quietly.

  “No, he wants the money, and he’s willing to kill innocent animals to get it.”

  There was no answer to that.

  Nathan sank into silence. He was seeing this from both sides, as he knew Ecaterina was as well. Her impassioned speech when she got back from the forest had persuaded him to check his natural impulse to punish the wrongdoers.

  She had explained to him that in towns like this, small towns in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, subsistence living was often the norm. One learned to expect lean times and to jump at work when it was offered, and so people were especially vulnerable to those who, pretending to be reasonable, preyed upon the natural instinct to provide for one’s family.

  And those people, she had told him, were brutal. They controlled through unpredictable violence and fear, and left one choice: obey and be richly rewarded, or disobey and be killed painfully. No matter how much they might, on some level, realize that they could be in the line of fire at any time, people kept their heads down out of instinct.

  They told themselves that everyone did whatever they needed to do to survive.

  They told themselves that they and their families had to be their first priority.

  Even Alexi of all people had agreed. He mentioned the times he went to talk to villagers about their traps. He had kept his concerns from the police, from being enforced by outsiders—and he always made sure that the families in question had enough to sustain themselves.

  To Nathan, much of this was unfathomable. Right was right, and wrong was wrong. It shocked him that two people he thought so highly of, who were as passionate about justice as he was, could defend Andrei’s actions.

  But he had learned that when people did things outside the norm he expected, he needed to ask why. He needed to dig deeper in order to understand.

  He looked over to where Ecaterina was chewing on her lip unhappily, and listened to Bethany Anne’s silence.

  His Queen was not waiting for mindless obedience, Nathan knew. She was waiting for an explanation. She wanted a reason, not simply a wish.

  She knew how easily a well-meaning desire for mercy could turn into something poisonous down the line.

  “I want to learn more about Andrei,” Ecaterina said finally. “Maybe he hasn’t been a willing participant in this—if he was scared for his grandfather or something. I want to find the others and ask them the same thing. Any of them who refuse to admit what they did was wrong—who are too far gone—I will deal with, but they should have the chance to make amends. People who have slipped once can become the strongest defenders of justice sometimes.”

  Bethany Anne didn’t miss a beat, “Very well, I leave it up to your discretion. Does anyone else have concerns or matters I should know about?”

  “How’s Bobcat?” Yelena asked. The moment she realized what she had said she flushed scarlet.

  “Locked up in his lab doing something with the beer competition.” Bethany Anne’s voice had a wicked tone, but she didn’t make a big deal of Yelena’s slip. “He’s like a man possessed. All he does is drink beer, plan beer—and work on ships.”

  “You know, that sounds pretty normal for Bobcat,” Nathan pointed out.

  “Yes, but we finally had him doing things other than that.” Bethany Anne sounded long-suffering. “Yelena, we need you back. You persuade him to come out of his office sometimes. No one else can do that. Anyway, if there’s nothing else, I’m off to train. You kids have fun ridding the countryside of degenerates.”

  The line clicked off, and everyone hid their grins at Yelena’s shy little smile.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds

  Bobcat hurried into his study. The door to the main room was locked behind him, as well as the study door—both locks. He looked around suspiciously to check for cameras.

  He only half-thought he was being ridiculous. He was the best brewer, and the other two knew it. Therefore, it stood to reason that they might be trying to put him under surveillance.

  He covered the camera on his computer and looked around once more.

  Good, he was alone.

  Almost reverently, he opened the nondescript box and pulled out the two bottles of myrcene oil. Both bottles had been packaged securely, and appeared to be undamaged. When he sniffed, not even a hint of the oil’s scent could be sensed.

  That was good. If a package had shown up smelling like hops, he was sure either Marcus or William would have heard about it.

  He set one bottle on the table and unscrewed the cap of the other, inhaling with a lazy smile.

  Then he inhaled again.

  The oil, as far as he could tell, really didn’t smell like much of anything at all.

  He sniffed again, then put the cap back on the bottle and crossed to his store of hops. He inhaled, and was greeted with the usual sharp scents.

  He looked at the myrcene oil, then he went back to his computer and searched for it. His shoulders settled back happily as he saw hundreds of results come back. Blogs came up, some with references as far back as ten years prior. Commenters on message boards asked in vain where they could get myrcene oil, and more recent posts showed a flurry of activity—a supplier had been found!

  Panic gripped Bobcat. If this technique was suddenly becoming popular, then it was possible Marcus and William might find out about it.

  The idea came to him in a flash: block the mention. He knew enough to get into the routers, and carefully began building a program that would block all pages with any mention of the oil. But, he reflected, that wasn’t quite enough…

  “May I ask what you are doing?” a computerized voice asked.

  Bobcat jumped. ADAM…he’d forgotten ADAM.

  “Uh…” He looked around worriedly.

  “There is no need to look for me. I am everywhere.”

  “That’s not reassuring,” Bobcat muttered.

  “Oh, dear. You appear perturbed. Is this my fault?”

  Bobcat considered. He had at first assumed that ADAM would fault him for his actions, but it appeared that the AI did not intend to chastise him.

  “I’m trying to make sure Marcus and William don’t steal my newest trick for the beer competition,” he explained.

  “You are worried that they will find the same trick on their own, or that they will learn it by watching you?”

  “By watching me.” Bobcat looked at the program. “Or that they will find it on their own,” he admitted.

  “Isn’t that unethical? You are denying them a valid technique.”

  “Well, yes…” Bobcat hunched his shoulders.

  “I think you should leave the webpages unblocked,” ADAM said after a moment.

  “Why?” He tried not to sink his face into his hands. He didn’t really want to hear a treatise on morality from an AI.

  “Because if you win the competition by denying others the same technology you have access to your victory will be meaningless, and you will come to have negative associations with the memory. Victory should be happy, not painful.”

  Bobcat looked around again.

  “I do not have a physical location,” ADAM reminded him.

  “Right, right.” Bobcat stared at the screen. “Thank you for your input. That was helpful.” He only narrowly managed to avoid using the phrase, “Surprisingly helpful.”

  With a sigh, he undid the blocks. Now anyone could find and use myrcene oil.

  “You had better hope Yelena is still impressed,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Romania

  Andrei woke up in the forest alone.

  The fall evening was getting cold, and he was chilled. Shivering, he pushed himself to his feet and groaned in pain.

  He remembered—or more accurately was desperately trying to forget—screaming in t
error, babbling answers to the wolf that had spoken to him, and seeing spots as he passed out time and again from fear.

  The wolf hadn’t been impressed with the lies he told.

  So he had told the truth. He had sold his employer out. Panic made his knees weak again.

  You did not sell out Ioan. Ioan killed people for disobedience and betrayal. Even talking back—hell, even a noncommittal look—was enough to earn a severe punishment.

  Sometimes, it was whispered, Ioan killed people who had done nothing at all. Andrei hadn’t seen it, himself, but he believed it.

  It was enough to make him think he should never have gotten mixed up in any of this.

  In fact, he was beginning to think he should get out.

  It was going to be difficult. He would need to get his grandfather to come with him, and Mihai was a man with a stubborn attachment to the town he’d grown up in. He would protest, but he had to come with Andrei. Ioan certainly knew where Andrei lived. He would kill Mihai in a heartbeat to make a point.

  As he stumbled back up the slope toward town, Andrei rubbed his arms to warm them, and tried to come up with a plan. His breath clouded in the cold air, and his brain was filling his thoughts with warm blankets and cups of tea.

  But he needed to focus.

  You didn’t run from Ioan without a plan.

  He would go in tomorrow, he decided. He would tell that weaselly Grigore that he’d managed to find out who was disabling the traps, and he’d killed him and hidden the body. Let Ioan hear that Andrei was a loyal servant. That way, when he disappeared they wouldn’t come looking for him immediately.

  Meanwhile he’d pay someone to help him and Mihai disappear. It wasn’t impossible, and Ioan would only spend so much time and effort to make a point.

  It was a good plan.

  At least, it had been a good plan until he came around the edge of the path into town and saw a black car idling by his house.

  The air seized in his lungs and Andrei heard himself whimper. Ioan was here, and he was waiting in Andrei’s house. That could not possibly mean anything good.